Fintech start-ups are the new kids on the block in the finance world. Taking inspiration from consumer brands, they’re outsmarting and outperforming traditional financial corporates to take hold of an emerging share of the market.
“Banking is essential. Banks are not” – Bill Gates
What are fintechs up to?
Essentially, fintechs are using inbound marketing strategy for financial services, offering better quality, more engaging, and more shareable content, and, taking advantage of social media and the new technologies that they’re so well versed in, they’ve successfully reached an audience that had otherwise disengaged from the finance sector.
With online banking, investing, and peer-to-peer payments established as the norm, more and more fledgeling fintechs are appearing on the market, battling for their share of the prize.
To stay ahead, there’s now a concerted effort to maximise marketing ROI across the board, with fresh and exciting content being the way to the top.
The key to this parable is that fintech is not just out-selling traditional financial services, it’s that they are blowing them out of the marketing water.
What can financial corporates do to keep up?
The very real threat of a diminished market share is already calling financial corporates into action.
By adopting the strengths and strategies of the digital ecosystems harnessed by fintechs, the number of financial corporates beginning the transformation into digital platform-based software is increasing rapidly. With many already establishing partnerships with fintech start-ups, incorporating them into their
own larger framework, or launching their own fintech subsidiaries.
As tech innovators in the sector, fintechs clearly have the upper hand with digital marketing. They know the lay of the land, and they know what connects with digital audiences.
This is no secret. Just look at the marketing campaigns coming from the likes of Goldman Sachs and then at those from fintechs such as Idea Bank or UnBank. There’s really no comparison.
The inbound revolution
What fintechs are doing so well, is tapping into the latest inbound marketing trends and strategies to offer extremely high-quality content that is easily distributed and shared across the web/social media.
With highly optimised websites, landing pages, insightful blog content, and so many other assets aimed at giving the new finance-sector consumer what they need to understand their services, fintechs are quickly tearing down the long-standing wall between the lay-person and high-rise banker.
In contrast, financial corporates are struggling to use the valuable information they create to bring in new business. It’s often unapproachable long-form material that is simply given away for free, with no underlying strategy in place to capture leads or gather audience information.
Rather than a close relationship, for many larger financial corporates, it’s still very much an us-and-them mentality. As competition grows, which it certainly will, this will have to change.
To compete, financial corporates need to focus on the following areas:
1. Education
Fintechs are taking a strong position on education, making it a central part of what they offer users. When compared with the opacity of banks, this is a huge selling point.
2. Simplification
Fintechs have mastered the user-experience side of things, an area where financial corporates have always come up short. To up their game, financial services need to offer more intuitive and approachable services. This can come naturally through an understanding of buyer personas: a central part of the inbound methodology.
3. Understanding
The success of fintechs often piggybacks on their understanding of the times we live in. Whether that’s by quickly rolling out marketing campaigns on the back of current affairs, shaking up the marketplace with purposive controversy, or even publicly prodding and teasing financial corporates to shine a light on their now outdated methods or fees. (Take a look at how TransferWise did just that.)
For fintechs, it’s all about the consumer. And rightfully, they want everyone to know it.
Inbound marketing for financial services is an area that offers huge potential for growth in these areas. Taking a leaf out of the increasingly large book of fintech success stories, financial corporates have huge scope to advance their content marketing output to rival fintech as they grow into more modern organisations.
They may have to outsource the creative, but any inbound marketing agency would relish the challenge to bring a large financial corporate into the modern age of marketing.